Interesting Mechanisms – 2024

It’s great to see all the robots that different teams brought to Worlds. Here are some of our favourites.

Leo: 14179 Sushi Squad
3 stage stacked claw that was designed to only pick up 2 pixels by squishing other pixels out.

Ryan: 18139 Rebel Robotics
Their robot has a compact tape measure rolling arm. It allows for minimal space to be occupied while having long reach.  The material of the ‘tape’ rolls into a tube as it extends out from the robot.

Jason: 11754  EnergySmart FTC
Their claw had a unique design, similar to ours, but instead of having a side-by-side centerpost with pincers mechanism, they had a mold like thing that would grasp all around their pixels. It would hold one pixel in the front and one in the back with two of our claws on each side; as if they were pincers; that could rotate around a wrist, making it in any orientation possible. The wrist would allow the pixels to be placed horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. In addition their arm can extend to ~3 ft.

Max: 11228 OverClucked Bots
Really cool scoring mechanism. It pinches the inside of a pixel and releases with a servo. 

Jasper: 18031 Horcruxes
Mostly made their own frame, not much channel or bought parts. Might have been expensive.

Kai: 11039 Innov8rz
I saw a super helpful mechanism which I want to try playing around with. It’s called a husky lens and it’s a AI training tool. The mechanism has a chip for training AI models and a small 2 inch IPS display so all the training can be done without a separate computer on the small display.  



Competition Day 3 – 2024

There’s no question that the surprise of the day was waiting in our Pit this morning. It is very much appreciated by all team members and especially the parents who do Pit Sitting for us!

We were visited by some judges. It was a great opportunity to show off our amazing posters!

Unfortunately, our matches didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. After one particularly rough match, our whole centerpost structure needed to be replaced with almost no time before our next match. Fortunately the team got it on in time, but it wasn’t fully functioning until the next match. At least we had a spare (“thanks Doug”)!

Our mascot finally put in an appearance today on Tiara Friday.

Competition Day 2 – 2024

The team had a very early start to the day playing in the first match of the morning! We were able to get a picture of the team between matches.

Dryw is an old fried of FIX IT who is now working for SparkFun. He came by to show us a new optical encoder that he’s been developing. Likely it will be available in May, in time for testing over the summer.

Kai with Dryw from SparkFun

Here are our results so far.

Match #RedBlueScore
Qualification 220279
19964
8872
3491
124:149
Qualification 1522708
14179
3491
10355
214:239
Qualification 3116008
3491
10138
25
68:161
Qualification 4710255
11112
3491
6294
238:182
Qualification 583491
22801
18031
8641
149:244
Qualification 7714793
9974
11228
3491
276:204
Qualification 9711148
3491
11754
18549
Qualification 1103491
11039
310
7842
Qualification 1207105
3491
10829
16417
Qualification 13223350
19706
3491
8610
Match Results

Unfortunately, our first two wins were followed by four losses. The good news is the robot was working well at the end of the day, and there’s still more matches tomorrow.

Competition Day 1 – 2024

The robot cart finally came today and we were able to finish setting up our pit. We also got some fancy green lights for our banner! We also got to play our first match and we even won!!!



Judging seemed to go well and they were interested in what we’d been doing this season.

Kai: I was so surprised when they told us we needed to reinspect our team prop, we never got told anything about it before and now we might need to change it. Auto’s gonna be rough  

Max: I’m glad we won our first match. Off to a good start!

Leo: I did my first scouting today and I’m excited for more!

Here’s our list of matches for the Thursday and Friday.

Match #RedBlueScore
Qualification 220279
19964
8872
3491
124:149
Qualification 1522708
14179
3491
10355
Qualification 3116008
3491
10138
25
Qualification 4710255
11112
3491
6294
Qualification 583491
22801
18031
8641
Qualification 7714793
9974
11228
3491
Qualification 9711148
3491
11754
18549
Qualification 1103491
11039
310
7842
Qualification 1207105
3491
10829
16417
Qualification 13223350
19706
3491
8610



Thanks to Kristina for the twinkling lights in our pit!

Day in Houston

Our robot, Captain Hook, arrived safely in Houston last night and right now we are unpacking it and testing every feature. We are preparing Captain Hook for competition tomorrow!

Cool things from the Pits

Jasper: We saw our team name in the FTC Hall of Fame, which I thought was really cool because its cool to see the past accomplishments of our team! 

Jason: One of the teams had a LEGO globe which teams can place a flag on where there from.

Leo: A team had a tape measure giveaway that was in inches and centimeters and it was really useful since I can’t find one when I need it.

Ryan: One of the teams had a super small robot which was really surprising.

Kai: I got to talk about a really interesting experimental technology with a SWERVE alumni from Washington who is now a Sparkfun employee. The technology is an optical version of dead wheels which has a built in IMU and laser which uses sensor merging to get the most accurate results. What was really cool is the technology comes out in May. 

Max: There was a team that had a raffle for a free safari trip to South Africa. I hope I win!

Tonight we went to a Vietnamese restaurant, Huynh, and the food there was fantastic! The Pho and other delicacies tasted really good and I would recommend going there again to any teams going to Worlds.

Bottle Drive

Thanks to Bottle Depot, FIX IT has charity account with them. Anyone can drop bottles off at the Bottle Depot (Glanford, Quadra or Queens locations) and let them know you’d like the refund to go to the FIX IT Robotics Team.

All the money raised will go to cover the team expenses. Even after we’re back from Worlds, bottles can continue to be dropped off to help with the ongoing costs of running the team.

If you have some bottles you’d like to give the team, contact us. We’d be happy to arrange to pick them up and do the sorting.

FIX IT is heading to FTC World Championships

It’s exciting to win the BC FTC Championships and find out your team has qualified for Worlds!

But then the planning starts. How do you all get there? Where will you stay? How do you improve your robot to make it ready for World Championships? How are we going to pay for everything?

Fortunately, our season plan started with a complete game analysis and robot strategy with improvements for each of our events. We already knew what we’d need to change to be ready for Worlds.

Our robot, Captain Hook, now has a much for effective claw and an extending are which should double our scoring in tele-op.

Our other priority is fundraising! If you’d like to support our team, please check out our GoFundMe. If you know a company who might want to sponsor the team, please contact us with the information.

Follow our journey in at World Championships on our website. We’ll be making new posts each day.

Team FIX IT – BC Championship – Inspire Award

BC Championships 2024

FIX IT was in the BC FIRST Tech Challenge Championships held in Surrey BC.   The top 24 teams from British Columbia and the Yukon were competing.   

Some of the highlights for our team were:

  • playing in the highest scoring match of the Qualifying Rounds. With Guild of Builders, we got a high score of game of 220 points including a 100 point perfect autonomous.
  • we had fun hanging out with other teams at the social on Saturday night.
  • thanks to FTC 18841 KSS One for choosing us to be on their Alliance.
  • Mecha mustangs had a really cool under glow on their robot. 

Of course, winning Inspire was our favourite moment of the day.

FIX IT will be competing at the FIRST World Championships in Houston Texas on April 17-20, 2024. Check out our Go Fund Me to help or contact us if you have a suggestion about a company who could sponsor our team.

November Scrimmage

On November 18, FIX IT was part of a CENTERSTAGE Scrimmage hosted by St. Margaret’s School in Victoria. It was our first event of the season, and the first ever event for two of our three drive team members!

Overall, we had a strong autonomous program that worked in most matches. Our robot could hang in end game. Unfortunately, our drone launcher lost the drone during the matches.

Our robot, Captain Hook, is very fast on the field. Even with a rookie driver, it was able to score lots of pixels in the backstage.



APOC Day 4

Today was a much quieter day with lots of packing. First was packing up our pit, then our suitcases so we would be ready to leave.




The Award Ceremony started at 10am. FIX IT won the Motivate Award!

After Awards, we spent some time exploring Macquarie University.

Personal highlights of the day

Max – winning the motivate award. It was exciting to see our hard work pay off.

Garrett – Going to the arcade with Project R. They introduced me to taiko no tatsujin, a drumming game that’s loads of fun!

Food/beverage highlights of the day

Garrett – Got my favourite food Chicken Alfredo from Bondi Pizza. It was clear that the sauce was made in house. Would recommend it.